The Future Revealed at the Library

by Bill Peak

Ten years ago, after my first day of work at the library, I drove
straight home and cancelled all but one of my magazine subscriptions.
What was the point in paying an annual fee to Field and Stream and The
Atlantic Monthly when I could read them absolutely free of charge at
the library? And now, with the library's online Zinio program and
Master File Premier database, the number of magazines I can read
without spending a dime of my own money numbers in the hundreds.

Still there was one subscription I just couldn't bring myself to
cancel. I first discovered Scientific American in a doctor's office
some forty years ago. I can still remember the article I read that
day, remember it, I believe, because I was surprised to find myself so
challenged by something picked up offhand while sitting in an
otherwise ordinary waiting room. Sometimes, when listening to Bach,
my brain responds to the complexities of that man's music as if it
were a muscle being stretched and strengthened by exercise. It feels
good. It feels very good indeed. And on that day, in that doctor's
office, for the first time in my life, I experienced a similar
sensation reading a simple magazine.

Needless to say, I was hooked. Though I am by nature a fiction and
poetry addict, once a month I look forward to losing myself in the
hard, cold, unrelentingly mysterious world of science that this one
magazine provides. Well, actually, that's not entirely true. Every
September, Scientific American runs a special edition devoted to a
single subject, and, by some perverse luck, the editors always seem to
pick a topic like computer science (boring) or quantum physics
(baffling) that leaves me cold. I may attempt to read an article or
two, I'll scan the latest findings and research updates in the
publication's news section, but the bulk of the thing will go into our
family recycle bin completely unread. So it was that, when this
September's issue arrived, I greeted it with a healthy dose of
skepticism. “The Future,” its cover proudly proclaimed in a sort of
retro, M. C. Escher script, and I found myself thinking, “Yeah ... your
future, my friend, won't be long.” Then I opened it up.

Counterintuitively for a magazine about what we usually think of as a
single time—the future—the issue follows a sort of chronological
order. The first article considers the deep time of geology. If the
Pleistocene marks the geological boundaries of a world warped and
molded by the last ice age, would some alien geologist visiting our
planet long after we're gone be able to detect evidence of our
existence in the stratum laid down while we were here ... and,
consequently, label that layer the “Anthropocene”? Next, a series of
articles looks at the immediate threats, challenges, and opportunities
facing our world and how they are likely to play out. We hear from
climate scientists, environmentalists, and even a denizen of the
dismal science: economics. Then medicine joins hands with technology
to consider two of mankind's oldest enemies, aging (can it be
defeated?) and mortality (would we even want to live forever if we
could?). Then an astrobiologist considers the lifespan not of
individual human beings but of the race as a whole. If we are,
indeed, in the midst of an “Anthropocene” epoch, how and when will it
end? Finally, in what strikes me as a bit of subtle lab coat humor,
the editors asked a Hugo Award-winning science fiction writer to judge
the likelihood that any of the forgoing authors' predictions will
prove correct.

I read the thing cover to cover. And now I invite you to as well.
The library has ten copies of Scientific American's September issue
available for check out, or you can just read it online using our
Master File Premier database. Which ever way you read the magazine, I
would love to hear what you think of it. On Monday, January 23, at
6:00 p.m., in the Easton library, and again on Thursday, January 26,
at 3:00 p.m., in our St. Michaels branch, I will, for the first time
ever, host a discussion not of a book but of a magazine, the September
issue of Scientific American. Together, let's find out what the
future holds in store.